The Arts

Art Description

Students explore traditional arts forms and styles to develop understanding of the concept of style. Students apply their art knowledge and, with guidance, produce a folio of finished artworks, selecting and using a range of contemporary and traditional media, materials, equipment and technologies.

Students experiment with imaginative and innovative ways of generating ideas and manipulating arts elements, principles to explore the potential of ideas, gaining inspiration from a broad range of sources, including artworks from different cultures, styles and historical contexts.

Learning Standards

Explore and Express Ideas

Students explore visual arts practices as inspiration to explore and develop themes, concepts or ideas in artworks. They explore how artists use materials, techniques, technologies and processes to realise their intentions in art works.

Visual Arts Practices

Students experiment with materials, techniques, technologies and processes in a range of art forms to express ideas, concepts and themes in artworks. They develop skills in planning and designing art works and documenting artistic practice.

Present and Perform

Students create and display artworks, describing how ideas are expressed to an audience.

Respond and Interpret

Students analyse how ideas and viewpoints are expressed in art works and how they are viewed by audiences. They identify and connect specific features of visual artworks from different cultures, historical and contemporary times.

Assessment

Visual Diary

Students record the inspiration for their works as well as the development of each project.

Folio of practical work

Students present their completed artwork

Analysis of Artworks

Students explore and discuss how artists have used Art elements such as colour and texture in the construction of their work. They also investigate how these artists have utilised the same approaches that they themselves have used in class to produce their own work, such as perspective.

Drama Description

In Year 7, Drama students undertake an intensive study of skills. These include: storytelling, improvisation, character, voice and movement. Students respond to their work in verbal and written forms and create performance work using various stimuli. They also gain experience performing in front of their peers and use props and costumes appropriately. Throughout the year, students learn to be articulate and empathetic and work in groups to negotiate outcomes and explore their own creativity and personality.

Learning Standards

By the end of Year 7, students identify and analyse how the elements of drama are used, combined and manipulated in different styles. They apply this knowledge in drama they make and perform. They evaluate how they and others from different cultures, times and places communicate meaning and intent through drama. Students collaborate to devise, interpret and perform drama. They manipulate the elements of drama, narrative and structure to control and communicate meaning. They apply different performance styles and conventions to convey status, relationships and intentions. They use performance skills and design elements to shape and focus theatrical effect for an audience.

Assessment

• Commedia Dell’Arte Performance

• Commedia Dell’Arte Written Reflection

• Indigenous Creation Story Performance

• Analysis of a Viewed Performance

Music Band Program

Description

Year 7 students learn to play a musical instrument (one of flute, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, trombone, bass guitar or percussion) in small tutorial groups before combining to form a Mentor Group band. They explore instrument care, assembly and making a sound. Students develop tone control along with theory skills of rhythm and pitch reading. They learn how to follow the conductor in a band setting and listen to the musical connection between parts of the ensemble. They experience performance in solo and group contexts through sectional and band rehearsals. All students perform at the Semester Concert.

Learning Standards

Dimension

• Explore and express ideas: students experiment with elements of music using instruments in the band setting.

• Respond and interpret: students develop listening skills, theoretical understanding of musical notation and musical concepts, and technical performance skills on their instruments.

• Present and perform: students rehearsal and perform in solo and group contexts.

Assessment

• Solo Performance

• Theory

English Description

The Year 7 English course is structured around three language modes: reading and viewing, writing, and speaking and listening.

Reading and Viewing involves students understanding, interpreting, critically analysing, reflecting upon, and enjoying written and visual, print and non-print texts. It encompasses reading and viewing a wide range of texts and media, including literary texts. Students develop an understanding of how texts are influenced by context, purpose and audience. Literary texts are drawn from a range of realistic, fantasy, speculative fiction and historical genres. They involve some challenging and unpredictable plot sequences and a range of non- stereotypical characters. These texts explore a range of themes and represent a variety of perspectives. Students engage with these texts independently and through group discussion. Students develop knowledge about a range of strategies for reading through teacher guided interpretation, as well as in peer led literature circles.

Writing involves students in the active process of conceiving, planning, composing, editing and publishing a range of texts. In Year 7 English, students will develop competence in the writing of analytical text response essays, as well as producing a folio of creative works in different forms and genres. This mode involves the development of knowledge about strategies for writing and the conventions of Standard Australian English. Students develop a capacity to discuss language conventions and use.

Speaking and Listening refers to the various formal and informal ways oral language is used to convey and receive meaning. It involves the development and demonstration of knowledge about the appropriate oral language for particular audiences and occasions, including body language and voice. Students will have the opportunity to present their own research and opinion on a contemporary social issue.

Learning Standards

Reading and Viewing

• Understand how text structures can influence the complexity of a text and are dependent on audience, purpose and context.

• Understand how the choice of language features, images and vocabulary affects meaning.

• Explain issues and ideas from a variety of sources, analysing supporting evidence and implied meaning.

• Select specific details from texts to develop their own response, recognising that texts reflect different viewpoints.

Writing

• Understand how the selection of a variety of language features can influence an audience.

• Understand how to draw on personal knowledge, textual analysis and other sources to express or challenge a point of view.

• Create texts showing how language features, text structures, and images from other texts can be combined for effect.

• Create structured and coherent texts for a range of purposes and audiences.

• Demonstrate understanding of grammar, use a variety of more specialised vocabulary and accurate spelling and punctuation when creating and editing texts.

Speaking and Listening

• Listen for and explain different perspectives in texts.

• Make presentations and contribute actively to class and group discussions, using language features to engage the audience.

Assessment

• Writing of creative, persuasive, informative, analytical, evaluative, and descriptive responses to texts

• Oral and multimodal presentations

• Language and literacy tests

• Individual and group tasks